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Dr Mark Gasson has become the first human to be ‘infected with a computer virus’ in an experiment that highlights the dangers of implantable technology.

When the chips are down… Dr Mark Gasson has highlighted the dangers of implantable technology

Dr Gasson, a cybernetics expert from the University of Reading, had a computer chip placed in his hand last year that he uses to open security doors and activate his mobile phone.

He’s now deliberately infected the chip with a virus and sent it to a PC to prove that humans with this sort of technology could cause problems as well as make life easier. The transmission of a virus could, for instance, damage medical devices such as pacemakers and cochlear implants.

Dr Gasson told BBC News: ‘With the benefits of this type of technology come risks. We may improve ourselves in some way but much like the improvements with other technologies, mobile phones for example, they become vulnerable to risks, such as security problems and computer viruses’

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Meanwhile, Professor Rafael Capurro, of the Steinbeis-Transfer-Institute of Information Ethics in Germany, has warned that further problems could arise from people tampering with implants remotely by hacking into them remotely.